Under Construction!

Wax On? Wax Off.

Why not wax? Because it’s wax, not resin. The plant creates wax to form a protective layer around the precious inner contents of its trichomes, or plant hairs. That gooey, sticky stuff is more or less the plant’s ‘essential oil’, which is what Arabs and the Islamic clergy (the inventors of alchemy and plant distillation) were fascinated with thousands of years before Walgreens starting shelving the stuff.

What I’m trying to say is that the plant’s aromatic components (namely it’s sticky resin) are what’s traditionally considered inhalable. It’s as simple as this: Wax burns hotter than oil. People say olive oil should always be kept on a medium low heat because the byproducts of higher temperatures aren’t desirable, or even carcinogenic. If that’s true, then inhaling wax vapor from a hot nail is like melting a candle in boiling olive oil, tossing the mixture into a wood stove, and sucking on the outpipe a few times. Cough to get off? I don’t think so.

The wax vesicle of the cannabis plant’s trichome head that protects its oily essence is better off used in topical medicines, hemp candles, and other products where concentration by weight (potency) isn’t a big deal. Otherwise, it doesn’t serve any purpose in an inhalant product but it does add dead weight, increase the concentrate’s boiling point, and gum up the inside of your vaporizer and respiratory system! Remember, high temps are hazardous!

What does that really mean? Don’t buy crumble, honeycomb, budder, or “wax” that actually looks like wax, no matter what the producer paid the non-licensed testing laboratory to print on the potency label.

More on this later, but for now, check out this picture of cannabis trichomes I found in the Cannabis Grow Bible! The gooey insides of the spherical brown trichome heads are the center of terpene synthase magic.